So, I bought my first roll of black seamless. Labeled as "jet black." No matter how far away from it I pull the subject, I get glare on the background. The paper is shiny. I want a low key image at times with no backlighting at all... did I buy the wrong paper?

Perhaps you should use velvet, velour, or duvateen instead. But you should also look at how you are keeping the subject light off the background. Do you have flags, barn doors, etc? Is your room very light allowing uncontrolled light to splash around the room, and onto the b/g?

My studio is so dark I had to have an extra modeling light on, but the glar was definitely falloff from the key light which was a 7' umbrella of bounced light. It is a huge soft light source.. no way to flag it I don't think.....

It sort of depends on the angle of your key light. If you're lighting from 45 degrees to the side then it's just a matter of placing the flag in line with the light striking the background (and not the subject).

However, if you're lighting with the 7ft umbrella nearly on axis you really can't do much that won't also change the lighting on your subject. In that case definitely get a different background material.

blutch wrote:
My studio is so dark I had to have an extra modeling light on, but the glar was definitely falloff from the key light which was a 7' umbrella of bounced light. It is a huge soft light source.. no way to flag it I don't think.....

Then you need to rethink your background material, because the paper will always be too shiny.

Thanks for all the suggestions.. I guess I could hang up a big piece of muslin.. I invested in a 3-roll background paper system so that I can easily go from one to the others. Kind of regretting that now... I will try the flagging and other suggestions. I prefer high-key portraits anyway, but wanted to have low key as an option. Would I have the same issue with a grey background? I like that look too, but I don't want it to be shiny like the black is...

The background is shiny because the light hitting it reflecting back into the lens. Change the angle of the camera or the lights to get the camera out of the "family of angles" of specular reflection and your shine will go away.

You can't directly front light hardly anything with getting some direct specular reflections, so you must control your family of angles accordingly.

Buy and read "Light - Science and Magic" by Hunter, Fuqua, and Fils to learn how to control light and reflection.

Chad Berry wrote:
Take a look here - Its been out there for quite a while, but I still take a 'refresher' look every so often.

This.

Once you understand how your lights and modifiers are behaving - cause and effect, etc, and your camera settings, achieving jet black isn't difficult. In fact imho, it's better to master the lights rather than depend upon light absorbing background material unless you're working in an impossibly small space.

looks like spill to me. Get the subject further from the backdrop, or do something like others have suggested and get some black velvet or something which will absorb all the light. black paper still has some shine to it. Suggest moving the lights more above the subject pointing more down and not towards the backdrop. A big enough source (softbox, etc) will still light softly with nice shadows. Also might try a grid on your softbox to "direct" the light towards the subject.

Change your f-stop to f5.6 or f8 and see if that cuts some of it down.